Sunday, December 28, 2008

As often happens during the weekends, another big debate is brewing on Twitter. Loic LeMeur wrote a post yesterday stating that Twitter needs authority based search, where the number of followers influences the search results, sort of like Google’s page rank. LeMeur says on his blog,

“We're not equal on Twitter, as we're not equal on blogs and on the web. I am not saying someone who has more followers than yourself matters more, but what he says has a tendency to spread much faster.”

And Michael Arringtonstrongly agrees. Thus, tweets from high profile users like LeMeur (15,000 followers) and Arrington (36,000) will jump to the top and ours will fall to the bottom. The whole issue started because LeMeur did not want to read all of the 7,000 tweets that were generated by his recent LeWeb conference. He only wanted to read those of the “important” people. I’m sure he had no problem taking the money of the unimportant that attended LeWeb.

14
comments:

Great post, Warren. The prob with going simply by followers is that many in the SM realm especially, go out of their way to boost their # of followers. So a high follower # doesn't NECESSARILY mean more influence. I know a guy that has 10K followers. But he follows 20K. I can think of many ppl with a fraction of the followers that I would deem to be far more influential in this space.

Bottom line for companies, they should listen to ANYONE that is talking about them. Period. End. Of. Sentence. The 'authority matters' argument is often championed by those that get excited by making the frontpage of their favorite aggregator ;)

I think it's a bad idea as # of followers is not a definitive measure of authority, and certainly not when we view the bigger picture. Twitter represents a small subset of the population, many influencers don't tweet, or may have smaller followings, does this mean their "authority" is only valid by these metrics? I am looking forward to the day when we do not view every engagement platform as an opportunity to dominate the kingdom but a real opportunity to connect and listen.

Bill, absolutely right. There is always an easy, effective way like you described. But then if you did that, you wouldn't be considered one of the elite, controversial, must-follow people now, would you?

I have been thinking that the ratio of tweets to followers is an indication of the quality of the tweets.

But number of followers can be gamed for sure. The Digerati, those who adopted early or make their living from our attention seem to link to each other but at some point they are obligated by their position to cover the interests of their followers.

Tweets to followers is an interesting metric. Definitely better than followers alone, or following to followers. My only concern is that certain popular or public figures will have very high tweets to followers even though they are probably not authorities. People may just be obsessed with getting a tweet from Britney for example.

About

Many of us have found Twitter to be much more than a messaging platform, but a real community where friends, business partners, and acquaintances get together for conversation. This blog seeks to answer questions, point out tips, identify cool tools and talk about Twitter. Hopefully it will be helpful to newcomers and experts alike. It is patterned after the great Facebook related blogs Inside Facebook, All Facebook and FaceReviews.

There is a lot of great discussion going on about Twitter on many blogs. I won't duplicate those ideas, but hopefully this central place will make them easier to find.

You can learn more about me, Warren Sukernek, here. And of course, you can email me, ws AT Twittermaven DOT com or feel free to follow me @warrenss at our favorite place.